The Russian composer Modest Mussorgsky (1839-1881) wins my ‘coolest composer’s name’ award, with honourable mention to German composer Engelbert Humperdinck (1854-1921) who of course is not to be confused with mellow British pop singer Arnold Dorsey who used Engelbert Humperdinck as a stage name. Mussorgsky was one of the “The Mighty Five” alongside Mily Balakirev, César Cui, Alexander Borodin, and (another contender for the cool name award) Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov. Together, these five fashioned a distinct national style of Russian classical music in the second half of the 19ᵗʰ century.
Mussorgsky’s works were inspired by Russian history and folklore, such as his opera Boris Godunov (about the Tsar who ruled Russia between 1598 and 1605), Night on Bald Mountain (a series of compositions inspired by Russian literary works and legends), and Pictures at an Exhibition. This latter piece is a piano suite in ten movements, written in 1874, and inspired by an exhibition of works by architect and painter Viktor Hartmann at the Imperial Academy of Arts in Saint Petersburg. Hartmann was as devoted as Mussorgsky to making intrinsically Russian art and the two had become firm friends. Each movement of the suite is based on an individual artwork.
Art critic Vladimir Stasov described the piece as Mussorgsky “roving through the exhibition, now leisurely, now briskly in order to come close to a picture that had attracted his attention, and at times sadly, thinking of his departed friend.”
The composition has become a showpiece for virtuoso pianists, but has also became widely known from orchestrations and arrangements produced by other composers, such as Maurice Ravel’s 1922 adaptation for orchestra. The excerpt below is the opening promenade from the Ravel version, as played by the National Youth Orchestra at Carnegie Hall, New York. This is another tune where I say “I bet you know it…”.
Incidentally, prog rock trio Emerson Lake and Palmer did a version of Pictures at an Exhibition, just as they did a version of another blog topic here, Aaron Copland’s Fanfare for the Common Man.
